Полина Саймонс – Lone Star (страница 17)

It fed too cleanly into the digested and mealy narrative about her, the stereotype she despised and had tried all her life to change. She didn’t want to not do well. She just didn’t want to be known as the girl with the Chinese mother who did well.

You would.

My mother is fifth-generation American, Chloe would answer to every suggestion of the supposed intellectual blessings of her ethnicity. She is more American than I am, since my father’s father was born in Ireland and his mother somewhere in the Baltics. My mother, on the other hand, makes peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. She frequently forgets to buy soy sauce. Does that sound Chinese to you? And yet how else to explain her own relentless quest for excellence? Every revolutionary date, every candidate for president, every battle in the Civil War, every Law and Act, every polynomial and integral domain, every tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow all the way to dusty death had to be not just memorized but internalized?

Pearl Buck wrote about the Chinese woman from a hundred years ago, but she could’ve been writing about Chloe’s mother and father. Jimmy Devine wanted a docile lamb who would be happy to contain herself within his four walls. Pearl Buck said that a woman full of energy and intelligence could not be contained within any man’s walls, but then Pearl Buck, the obedient daughter of a Christian missionary in China, had never met Lang Devine. She can’t be held there, Pearl Buck wrote, even if the walls were lined with satin and studded with diamonds. Chloe disagreed. Her mother’s wood cabin walls weren’t lined or studded with anything but photos of Chloe.

Pearl Buck seemed to think that Lang would soon discover she was living within prison walls. Chloe begged to differ.

Even children were not enough for some women. She may want them, Pearl Buck wrote, need them, and even have them, and love them, and enjoy them. But they wouldn’t be enough for her. “Nobody likes children, Chloe,” her mother would often say. “But we have them anyway.” Chloe was almost sure Lang was joking. Because for some women, children were everything.

Some women didn’t know anything about politics. It took all their effort to be wives and mothers. Well, Ms. Buck opined, that may be sufficient for some women, but their husbands certainly found the time to occupy themselves, not only in their chosen fields and with being husbands and fathers, but also apparently, with other women as well. Just ask Terri Gramm next door who worked sixty hours at L.L.Bean to pay the mortgage while her husband honeymooned in Maui with the assistant baker from Dunkin’ Donuts.

Chloe swore she would grow up to be a different kind of woman, not Terri, not Lang, not the donut-maker-helper.

But what kind of woman?

She had no idea. Chloe had the answer to everything, except the important things.

“Don’t worry about what’s in the suitcase for a moment,” she said to Blake in a voice thick with longing. “And the answer to the why will come. Just start at the beginning. Start with something true and real. Begin with your two main characters, the junk dealers.”

“If you’re going to make fun,” Blake said, “I’m going to give them another livelihood.”

“I’m not making fun. Tell me about them.”

Eagerly Blake opened the notebook to the second section. Character. Pages were filled in pencil in a slow and careful hand, too slow, too careful for Blake. Her delighted skepticism must have been apparent on her face. Without affront, he said, “Did you know, Miss Smartass, that Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime?”

She marveled into his grinning face, tedium forgotten, even Barcelona and parents and Hannah’s other lover forgotten for a moment. “The surprise here,” she said, “is that you would know anything about Van Gogh.”

“Come on, Haiku, you know I’m a font of useless information.”

She broke a pencil. “Are you implying that you will also sell only one thing in your lifetime, say your purported story? Or could you possibly be equating yourself with Van Gogh’s talent?”

“Neither.” Blake was unperturbed by her teasing. “Red Vineyard was not even his best painting.”

“It was pretty good, let’s say that, but again, how is that relevant”—she wagged her finger in a small pi-circle at him and his notebook— “to what’s going on here?”

“All I’m saying,” Blake said, “is that if Gerald Ford can be a male model, then yours truly can be a writer.”

“Another metaphor entirely, but at least more apropos.”

“And did you know that Einstein did not or could not speak until he was nine years old?”

“How in the flipping world is that relevant?”

“Maybe I’m a late bloomer like him.”

Chloe smiled. He was being so cute. “Maybe. But the thing that’s actually relevant about Van Gogh is that he painted the Red Vineyard not while standing at the window looking out at it, but solely from his memory and imagination. Take that away and mull it, Einstein.”

Blake took it. He mulled it. “Maybe The Blue Suitcase will be my Red Vineyard,” he said, his own voice deep with longing.

“Or you could try writing something like Breath by Samuel Beckett,” Chloe said, straight-faced. “It’s one of his lesser known plays. It lasts thirty seconds and has no actors and no dialogue.” Her eyes twinkled.

And Blake, bless him, laughed, as Chloe had hoped he might. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “It’s called an intermission.”

And Chloe laughed.

The proctor shushed them. “Mr. Haul, I’ll thank you to keep your voice down.”

“What if I’m a writer?” Blake said to her, lower and leaning in. “I could be a writer, no?”

It must have grated on him that Chloe didn’t think he could do it. And she didn’t even think that. Well, all right, she did. She did think that. But so what? What did it matter what she thought? God.

“Figure out what’s in your suitcase,” she said, “and you will be a writer.”

Blake sat contemplating her. His face was inscrutable.

“What?” She became discomfited. She hated not knowing what people wanted from her. She didn’t like to disappoint.

“What do you think should be in it?”

“It’s your story.”

“But if it was your story.”

Chloe shrugged. “This one lady I deliver Meals on Wheels to, all the way in Jackson, lives in a yellow shed. I’m not kidding, it’s a shed off the main property, which is huge, but the shed is tiny, and it’s painted yellow, and she sits in a chair outside this canary box all day and watches the road, the cars, the walkers. She’s right past the covered bridge to Jackson. She’s ninety-two. She tells me that she prays to Jesus every day that today will not be the day she dies because she wants to be buried with all the jewelry her husband had given her, but she’s afraid her kids will never go for it once she’s dead. She tells me she’s trying to figure out how to get buried alive so she can decide what goes with her. She’d probably put her jewelry into this vanished case.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lupe.”

“I need to meet her ASAP,” Blake said. “Are you and Hannah doing Wheels tomorrow? Mason and I will go with you.”

Chloe didn’t know what to say.

He was so excited, he skipped right over her lying silence. Then it was time to go.

They ran for the late bus, heaved on, said hi to Freddy the thoroughly vetted and tested union driver. Chloe sat next to the window, Blake next to her, their backpacks squeezed between their legs. Freddy waited another minute for stragglers. Chloe spotted Mason still in his baseball uniform, walking down the path from the fields, with a team of catchers and cheer girls flanking him with their pom poms and their camaraderie. He saw the bus, waved to Freddy, yelled something facing the girls while running backward, then turned and sprinted with his gear and school books to the blue bus. In the twenty seconds it took Mason to jump on, Blake had gotten up and moved over one seat. Mason took the vacant spot next to Chloe. Blake sat with his back to the windows, his feet stretched out. He nearly tripped Mason with his sticking-out black Converse hi-tops.

A panting, sweating Mason kissed Chloe. “Sorry I’m all gross,” he said, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jersey.

“No, I like it.” It was nice to feel an exerting Mason wet on her skin. It was only after sports that she felt it.

“Mase, we’re going with the girls tomorrow,” Blake announced. “Meals on Wheels. To get awesome deets for our story.”

Holding Chloe’s hand, Mason shook his head. “No can do, bro. End-of-year varsity barbecue tomorrow. Sorry. But the three of you go. Have a blast.”

Twisting her mouth this way and that, Chloe looked out the window. How does she tell Blake that Hannah hasn’t gone to Meals on Wheels with her in months?

10

Lupe

HANNAH’S WHEREABOUTS ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS WAS explained by none other than Hannah herself who, as soon as they came pounding on her door to tell her about tomorrow, said, Chloe, what are you talking about, I haven’t been doing Wheels with you in months. You know I’ve been working the lunch shift at China Chef, trying to save up for our trip.

Blake’s kinetic gaze slowed down to take in Hannah, and then Chloe for a puzzled moment longer. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?” he asked.